This invention relates generally to an electromechanical serial printer and more particularly to a serial printer for printing characters in a line by moving one of two character rings in a lateral direction. In the prior art, dot printers have been used wherein the characters are constituted of a plurality of tiny dots. However in many instances, the printed character became obscure and the structure of the dot head for producing the dots on the paper was complicated and expensive. In other printers the number of print rings was made equal to the number of columns or digits which were to be printed in a single lateral line. Such an apparatus was costly and complicated and generally required separate circuitry including a solenoid plunger associated with each individual print ring in order to set the characters for printing.
What is needed is a serial printer providing the quality in printing normally achieved with pring rings but not having the complexity of a printer having an individual print ring associated with each digit in a serial number which is to be printed.